As leader of
Donovan’s tech
council, Sanjay
Macwan is
helping revamp
AT&T from a
phone company
to a technology
company.
$14.99 per month. And as long as
the folks he’s tracking on FamilyMap are on AT& T’s net, it doesn’t
matter what phone they carry.
The second way AT&T hopes to
distinguish itself is by creating
great relationships with app
developers. Donovan understands
startups from his years protecting
them as EVP of web-commerce
security company VeriSign. When
he joined AT&T in 2008, he knew
that success in the appiverse
hinged on spotting new ideas and
bringing them to market quickly.
Then, developers might flock
AT&T’s way, giving the net work
first shot at the next Angry Birds
or Foursquare. “If we just keep
having things first, first, first,
then the first trip people will
make is into our stores,” he says.
So Donovan created his own
version of a Silicon Valley incuba-
tor. First, he tapped assistant VP
Sanjay Macwan to head an inter-
nal tech council that thinks up
ways to make the company more
nimble. As a result, last year, the
company held 150 “speed dates”—
essentially 15-minute fast-pitch
sessions with VC–backed busi-
nesses. He also launched a crowd-
sourcing network inside the
company, dubbed TIP, or the Inno-
vation Pipeline. More than 35,000
